The ability to transmit, store, update, and consume a wide variety of images, documents, data files, media, and other electronic information items is at the forefront of the requirements for many industries today. Solutions to provide scalable, manageable, and robust order placement, delivery, and fulfillment, constantly plague various applications. Intrinsic to these environments is the vast amounts of data, the variations in the sources and details of such data, and the myriad of storage and delivery locations for the data. For example, given that the potential size of digital image files will depend on resolution, compression formats, and other attributes, there exists a need to provide a methodology that can be utilized to obtain images for product offerings and delivery options in a fast and consistent manner, irrespective of the file size. Importantly, such methodology needs to be transparent to the user or application program, efficient, and reliable.
The wide spread use of computing devices and application programs creates avenues for developers and applications to address data consolidation, data collation, and data migration requirements by providing systems or tools that may be utilized to facilitate end user requirements. Such a tool or system is one that addresses network asset/media access, and that may be utilized as an end-product or be integrated into existing or newly developed systems. Presently available systems and tools tend to be limited in their ability to handle multiple sources and types of data items. Access, when provided, is relatively slow and cumbersome. A user or application program is at the mercy of the availability, throughput and organization of a remote data repository such as a home or office computer, at the time of a product request. These existing systems do not employ or offer a scalable, transparent and efficient solution that can be widely deployed. As such, there is a need for significant improvement in such systems and tools.
What is needed is a tool and/or system that will facilitate and enable the ability to, in one aspect, identify and define data items relative to the data source location; provide caching and pre-fetch for quick access; provide a representation of the data items for use in application programs; eliminate the need for moving large amounts of data items across networks; and recognize patterns in the interest level of the data items.
One area in which such a tool might be beneficial is in digital photo image processing. Digital photo image processing is a rapidly growing technology area. Digital cameras and other image sources are in wide use today and a user has many options as to how the digital images are converted to a photograph and where the image may be stored. For example, users may simply download digital images from a digital camera to a computing device for direct printing. A user may also download images to a personal computer where the user may edit or otherwise modify the digital image as desired. Digital images may also be stored on mobile devices or uploaded to various social websites. Another currently available option is to physically deliver or send the digital images electronically to a photofinisher or kiosk that will print and mail the desired photos or imprint the images onto other products for the user. Yet another option enables an end user to send electronic digital images to fulfillment centers that can provide imprinting services of the images onto other goods such as greeting cards, mugs, baseball caps, bags, and a variety of other items.
In all of these instances, data is being moved around a network or from one hosting device to another. Access to the data is limited by throughput and connectivity to the hosting device, a user's memory or recollection of where things are stored, or a myriad of filing or cataloging systems that enable the user to identify the location of various images. This inefficient, ad hoc and error-prone approach creates a burden for the user. As the quantity and complexity of the data items increases, so do the adverse effects. There is currently no efficient technique for accessing and conveying a wide variety of data items, let alone increasing the speed of access to such data items even when the data items exist on multiple devices.
The present invention fills these and other needs.